It was only a glimpse through a train’s window as it made an unscheduled stop. Edward Thomas never alighted from the train, but what we have received from him is a description of a place as if he had gotten out and walking around or standing in a field within the village’s perimeter. It is casually written, i.e., comes off as a one-off ditty quickly scribbled down on a piece of paper. Yet it is a poem of quality. Its directness of language and clear imagery, the scenery successfully captured and all held together in meter and rhyme.
Yes, I remember Aldestrop –
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop – only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
He tells us at the beginning, and later on in the poem, that what he recalls is the name. The poem begins with the affirmative “Yes”, as if he were in the middle of a conversation, which in a way he is, a conversation with himself, his memory. He puts the reader into that conversation also. But we do not know it is only the name as he ends the line with the name of the place, leaving the reader to think that he will be describing the place as if he’d spent some time there. So after giving us the name of the place at the end of the first line, he begins the second by telling us it is only the name of the place he remembers. And to say it the other way, “Yes, I remember the name/Adlestrop” would give us a different meaning. We would be led to think he would be writing about the name, which alone might not seem interesting. It wouldn’t have worked here. It wouldn’t have captured or presented the reader with the place instead of the name. He would then be talking about a word instead of a place.
Then he proceeds to inform us of how he got there, what time of day and about the weather. It was on a hot afternoon and he was travelling by train, going elsewhere but Adlestrop and in fact, the train was not even supposed to stop there. “[T]he express-train drew up there/Unwontedly.” Besides it being an unusual and unscheduled stop, it would appear to be an inconvenience on the poet who was on an express-train, obviously preferring to bypass Adlestrop. Why it stopped there unexpectedly we are never told. Instead we are told that it was in June.
In the next stanza, Thomas presents us with clear imagery of the inaction of what is happening outside. The train’s steam has hissed and then an anonymous someone cleared his throat, and there weren’t any passengers boarding or leaving the train, which probably made the stop all the more unusual. Just a bare platform is what he observes. Someone clearing his throat is almost an insignificant thing, but Thomas’ immediate surroundings were so lacking of other significant action that he catches this. This is the only other person on the train it seems, besides Thomas and whoever else is operating the train. Certainly no one boarded, since he told us so directly.
Along with seeing the bare platform, he then informs us that what he saw “Was Adlestrop – only the name” as it was on a sign. We thought at first he meant that he saw Adlestrop the village, but this is negated by “only the name”, thus he didn’t see the village. But then, beyond “the name”, which ends the second stanza and divides the poem, he then sees the flora that is around the train station. This division is significant, as after this the scenery of the poem changes. We go from the train and the train station, the name of the place of the place and the billboard, the interior of the train and the passenger clearing his throat to flora. But it is also important that it is the name he sees and which he remembered, as he mentioned at the beginning of the poem – he remembers the name and he has seen the name, for a name distinguishes what it names, as a name distinguishes a person or place, or a thing. His seeing the name assures him that Adlestrop is where the train has unexpectedly drew up and where he presently is, not mistaking it for the next stop and the next town. He is certain, which is important.
The poem’s scenery stretches out and we move from the interior of the train and an empty platform to lush scenery of “willows, willow-herb, and grass/And meadowsweet and haycocks dry”. This is what he will recall about Adlestrop, after the name and the bare platform of the train station where no one alighted or boarded the train. Then, after viewing the flora, his eyes gaze upward to the sky in which the cloudlets are lonely and fair. This attribution of a lonely feeling to the cloudlets is an extension of the poet’s state. Yet, it is not a despairing sense that overwhelms him. The cloudlets are also fair, i.e., gentle, light, there are no signs of a storm or rain or overcast impending. It is a fair day.
But could the sense of felling lonely be an extension if the poet’s sudden sense of “Where am I?” with the train’s sudden and unexpected stop? He was expecting a different stop. He was disturbed out of a schedule and a route he expected to have been followed. He probably asked the following as the train was stopping – “Where are we? Why are we here? Why have we stopped?” These questions were unresolved since there weren’t any passengers boarding or leaving and so he probably asked after the train pulled off, “Why did we stop there?”
In that minute, however, he catches the song of a blackbird (Thomas knew his birds and plants, he knew their names and thus was able to sight and name, hence also the name of Adlestrop was a vital fact) that sang close by. But these other birds are “mistier/Farther and farther . . .” He cannot see them, so he cannot name them. Then the poem opens farther out, as he also catches the sound of other birds, whether more blackbirds alone, or other kinds of birds we do not know, but they are the birds of the surrounding Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. And that is where the poem ends, not in Adlestrop, but in the names of the surrounding Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
And so the poem begins in one specific place, more intimately, it begins with one name and then encompasses, at the end, the names that surround Adlestrop.
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